Gun in One Hand, Pain in the Other: Straw Is Tyler Perry’s Most Unhinged Film Yet

By Trinity Barnette

I didn’t plan to watch Straw. My mom suggested it one night, and we hit play without much thought—just expecting a typical Tyler Perry drama. But within minutes, I was emotionally locked in. This movie wastes no time dragging you into chaos. The story centers on Janiyah Wilkinson, played with raw intensity by Taraji P. Henson, a single mother just trying to make it through the day.

And what a day it is.

Janiyah wakes up to a chain reaction of hellish events: she’s berated by her landlord and evicted, fired by her boss (played by Glynn Turman), run off the road by a seemingly racist cop, and loses custody of her sick daughter, Aria. When she goes back to work to get her final check, she walks right into an armed robbery. In a panic, she fights back, shoots the robber in self-defense, and then—still in shock—shoots her boss during his 911 call. From there, she stumbles across the street to cash her bloody check and finds herself in what becomes an accidental bank hostage situation.

And that’s just the beginning.

What makes Straw so disorienting—and powerful—is its unexpected psychological twist. For most of the movie, Janiyah’s love for her daughter drives everything. But in a devastating reveal, we learn that Aria actually passed away from a seizure the night before. Janiyah has been hallucinating her presence the entire time, lost in a cycle of grief and survival-mode delusion. The line between reality and imagination continues to blur through the final act, leaving viewers questioning what’s real—and whether Janiyah herself can still tell the difference.

Straw is exhausting. Messy. Heartbreaking. And in a way, brilliant. It’s Tyler Perry at his most chaotic and emotionally charged, anchored by one of Taraji’s best performances to date. Let’s break it down.

The Day From Hell

From the moment Straw opens, there’s no buildup—just impact. We meet Janiyah Wilkinson as she wakes up in her modest apartment, unknowingly stepping into what will become the worst day of her life. And it’s not just bad luck—it’s a relentless barrage of injustices that push a woman already on the edge straight into a psychological free fall.

The first domino falls when Janiyah offers a few dollars to Benny, a man from her neighborhood. Her landlord sees the exchange and uses it as a reason to remind her that she’s late on rent—again. She’s then hit with a warning: eviction is coming. She brushes it off, determined to power through her day, because she always does. But this isn’t a normal day.

Shortly after, things spiral even faster. A seemingly racist white cop purposely crashes into Janiyah during a routine drive, damages her car, confiscates her expired license, and has the car towed. She walks the rest of the way to her job at a local grocery store only to get fired by her boss, Richard (played by How to Get Away with Murder’s Glynn Turman, who—let’s be real—always brings gravitas). The way she’s dismissed, after everything she’s been trying to juggle, is dehumanizing.

That job was one of two she worked to keep the lights on and get asthma medicine for her daughter, Aria. But now, after being reported to child services, Janiyah loses custody too. Her daughter—her entire world—is ripped away.

In the pouring rain, Janiyah returns home to find her belongings dumped on the curb. It’s the final blow, or so she thinks.

Desperate to get her paycheck from her old job, she returns to the grocery store and walks into an armed robbery in progress. The robbers recognize her. One says her name. Something inside her snaps. She fights for the gun and shoots one of the robbers in self-defense. But her boss—who already didn’t trust her—thinks she set the whole thing up. He calls 911. In a split-second panic, Janiyah shoots him too.

She’s dazed. Bleeding. Broken. And still, all she can think about is cashing that damn check.

She stumbles across the street to the bank, blood-stained and visibly shaken, to get her money. But she doesn’t have her ID—just a check and a child’s science project blinking in her backpack. From here, the misunderstanding explodes. The employees think she’s robbing the place. A bomb threat is called in. The bank is locked down. Janiyah sets the robber’s gun on the counter, trying to prove she’s not a threat, but it’s too late. The police are already outside. The media is spinning their version of the story. And Janiyah is now the lead suspect in a bank hostage crisis.

That’s the thing about Straw. It’s not just about a woman going through a hard time. It’s about what happens when the systems designed to support people like Janiyah—Black, poor, single mothers—do the exact opposite. Every institution in her life fails her: housing, employment, healthcare, law enforcement, and even the media.

And while the pace of this movie is dizzying, that’s the point. It doesn’t give you time to breathe, because Janiyah doesn’t get to breathe. And when you finally do pause, you realize: this was never just a bad day. It was a setup. A pile-up of neglect, abuse, and grief so deep, it pushes Janiyah past the point of no return.

What Was Real and What Wasn’t

As Straw barrels toward its climax, the chaos inside the bank mirrors what’s unraveling inside Janiyah’s mind. From the outside, she looks like a woman gone rogue—gun in hand, unhinged, erratic. But what we’re actually witnessing is a woman mid-breakdown, trapped in grief so deep it rewrote her reality.

The film’s most jaw-dropping moment comes when Janiyah’s mother, Delores, calls her during the standoff. Janiyah’s crying, pleading, desperate to see her daughter Aria again. And then the gut-punch: Delores gently reminds her that Aria died the night before.

Suddenly, everything clicks. The scenes of Janiyah making breakfast for Aria? Dropping her off for school? Talking to her in the car? All hallucinations. Aria was never there—at least not physically. What we saw was the manifestation of a grieving mother in complete denial. Janiyah’s trauma didn’t start when she lost her job or got evicted. It started when she lost Aria—and from that moment, she was simply living on autopilot.

The twist reframes the entire film. That early moment where Janiyah appears to be speaking to her daughter in the backseat of the car? She’s talking to no one. The grocery store scenes, the arguments, the urgency to feed and protect a child who’s already gone—it all makes sense in retrospect. She didn’t snap in the bank. She snapped long before that.

Tyler Perry doesn’t just use this twist for shock value—it’s a statement. A disturbing one. Because how many women like Janiyah are walking around smiling, working, and trying to function after unimaginable loss? How often is grief mistaken for madness, or worse—criminality?

The hallucinations don’t stop with Aria. One of the film’s most intense sequences—where the FBI storms the bank and guns Janiyah down—is later revealed to be another delusion. In reality, Janiyah is talked down by Nicole (Sherri Shepherd), the bank manager who becomes her quiet ally. Detective Raymond (Teyana Taylor) gently cuffs her, and the crowd outside the bank cheers in solidarity.

But even that moment—the protestors with signs, the support from strangers, the flicker of hope—feels too clean, too cinematic. Was it real? Or was it Janiyah’s last coping mechanism, imagining that the world finally saw her pain and stood up for her?

Straw plays with this uncertainty deliberately. Because when you’ve been gaslit by poverty, racism, systemic failure, and now grief, reality doesn’t feel solid. It bends, breaks, and shifts in ways that make survival the only truth. So even when the ending leans toward hope, you can’t be sure if it’s real or just Janiyah’s final daydream—one last illusion to make the weight of her daughter’s death a little easier to bear.

The line between perception and reality is not just blurred—it’s obliterated. And in that blur is where Straw delivers its deepest punch. Because whether or not the world believed her, we saw her. We saw what happens when society leaves a woman like Janiyah to fend for herself. And we saw what it costs.

Performance, Power, and Perry

Let’s get one thing straight—this movie would not hit the same without Taraji P. Henson. The role of Janiyah Wilkinson was not just acted, it was lived. She carries Straw on her back like a woman dragging the weight of the world behind her, and by the time she reaches that bank, we believe every tremble in her voice, every crack in her mind, every scream for a world that never listened. Taraji delivers a performance so raw that at points, it stops feeling like a movie. You’re not watching Janiyah—you are her. You’re suffocating with her, breaking with her, hallucinating with her.

That bank scene? When she’s sobbing with a gun in one hand and a bloody check in the other, begging just to cash it so she can “take care of her daughter”—even though the audience now knows Aria is gone? That’s Emmy-level grief work. That’s a masterclass in unraveling a character from the inside out. There are actresses who play mental breakdowns. Taraji becomes one.

But she’s not the only standout. Sherri Shepherd as Nicole—the bank manager who sees the human beneath the chaos—offers a beautiful foil to the hysteria. She’s calm, steady, motherly. It’s a side of Sherri that many audiences haven’t seen, especially if you’re used to her in daytime comedy or talk show mode. And honestly? She killed it.

Then we have Teyana Taylor as Detective Raymond, who gives First Wives Club meets undercover queen. Her presence commands respect, and the way she handles the standoff—especially when she breaks ranks with the trigger-happy FBI to protect Janiyah—is layered and nuanced. She isn’t just playing a cop. She’s playing a Black woman trying to do her job without becoming a tool of the system. And that subtle tension? Teyana delivers.

We can’t ignore that Glynn Turman ate too, even in a small but impactful role. As Janiyah’s boss, he goes from dismissive to dead, but every line he delivers feels grounded. And if you’re a How to Get Away with Murder fan, yes, I too screamed “Nathaniel Lahey Sr.?!?”

Now let’s talk Tyler Perry. Because you know the internet loves to tussle about his work—and sometimes for good reason. Perry’s catalog is full of Black women suffering. Abuse, addiction, poverty, death—it’s a recurring cycle. And Straw doesn’t break that pattern. But what it does do is sharpen the critique. Janiyah isn’t just a victim. She’s a product of neglect. Systemic, societal, and emotional neglect. Perry pulls no punches in showing how impossible it is to “just try harder” when the world is actively working against you.

Yes, it’s heavy-handed. Yes, the melodrama is loud. But sometimes the story demands it. Straw isn’t here to whisper. It’s here to scream.

Tyler Perry wrote, directed, and produced this himself, and while the pacing falters in places, and the hallucination twists could’ve been better set up, the core message lands: Being poor is expensive. Being a Black mother is exhausting. Being pushed to the brink is inevitable.

In the end, Straw gives you chaos, commentary, and catharsis. And whether you love or hate Perry’s approach, you can’t deny that this film feels. Viscerally. Uncomfortably. Unforgettably.

Final Thoughts & What Straw Says About Us

At its core, Straw isn’t just about a woman losing control—it’s about a woman who never had control to begin with.

Janiyah is not some dramatized caricature of dysfunction. She is every mother juggling bills, jobs, illness, and grief with no safety net. She is the product of a society that punishes poverty, criminalizes survival, and pathologizes pain—especially when it’s coming from a Black woman. Her story is an emotional explosion wrapped in systemic failure. And that’s the point.

There are two types of viewers when it comes to this movie: the ones who ask “Why didn’t she just stay calm?” and the ones who understand why she couldn’t. The latter will sit with this story long after the credits roll.

Because the truth is, Straw isn’t just about Janiyah. It’s about all the women who scream at the sky and get labeled “crazy” instead of “cornered.” It’s about all the single mothers who are told to pull themselves up by bootstraps they were never even given. It’s about how fast grief, injustice, and survival mode can turn a person into someone unrecognizable—even to themselves.

And Perry’s choice to blur reality with delusion only makes the commentary sharper. Is the cheering crowd real? Or is it Janiyah’s final illusion—her brain offering one last moment of comfort before reality comes crashing back down?

We may never know. But maybe that’s the point, too.

Maybe Straw asks us not to judge whether Janiyah was “right” or “wrong,” but to ask why she got there in the first place. What systems failed her? Who could’ve helped her? Why are Black women expected to stay composed while drowning?

Tyler Perry might not always get it perfect, but Straw is messy, urgent, and brutally honest—and sometimes that’s exactly what a story needs to be.